Betrayed while asleep, 17 Afghan policemen killed

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A wave of betrayal has left at least 17 Afghan policemen dead in the past 10 days -- all slain in their sleep at the hands of those close to them.

In the very early hours of Thursday morning, Dec. 27, an Afghan policeman unlocked the door of the post where he was stationed in Oruzgan province and let in his friends from the Taliban, who with knives and guns helped him kill four and wound eight of his sleeping colleagues.

On Sunday, a local police commander in the remote northern province of Jawzjan shot to death, in their beds, five of the men under his command and fled to join the Taliban.

And Dec. 18, a teenager apparently being kept for sexual purposes by an Afghan Border Police commander in southern Kandahar province drugged the commander and the other 10 policemen at the post to put them to sleep, and then he shot them all; eight died, and three survived with wounds.

In the crisis that has risen in the past year over insider killings, when Afghan security forces turn on their allies, the toll has been even heavier for the Afghans themselves -- at least 86 in a count by the New York Times this year, and the full toll is likely to be higher -- than it has for U.S. and other NATO forces, who have lost at least 62, the latest in Kabul on Monday.

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Unlike most insider attacks against foreign forces, known as "green-on-blue" killings, most of the attacks between Afghans, "green on green," have been clear cases of either infiltration by Taliban insurgents or turncoat attacks. As with the three recent attacks, they have fallen most heavily on police units, and they have followed a familiar pattern: The Taliban either infiltrate someone into a unit or win over someone already in a unit, who then kills his comrades in their sleep. Frequently, the victims are first poisoned or drugged at dinner.

"I tell my cook not to allow any police officer in the kitchen," said Taaj Mohammad, a commander of a border police check post near the one in Kandahar attacked Dec. 18. "This kind of incident really creates mistrust among comrades, which is not good. Now we don't trust anyone, even those who spent years in the post."

The most recent of the green-on-green betrayals took place about 3 a.m. Thursday in the town of Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. According to Fareed Ayal, a spokesman for the provincial police chief, a police officer named Hayat Khan, who had been in regular touch with the Taliban for religious guidance, waited until the other officers at his check post fell asleep, then called Taliban fighters by cellphone and let them in. First the attackers stabbed the one officer who was on watch, but he raised the alarm in time to awaken some of the police officers.

In the ensuing firefight, four policemen were killed and eight were wounded while Khan and his Taliban confederates escaped, according to Ayal's account.

In the attack Sunday, in northern Jawzjan province, the victims all were part of an Afghan Local Police unit whose commander had previous connections with the Taliban. Such local police units, strongly supported as part of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, undergo a period of training as well as guarantees from community leaders and elders that the units have no further insurgent ties.

Gen. Abdul Aziz Ghairat of the Jawzjan Provincial Police said that the commander who killed the men in their sleep, Dur Mohammad, had fled but that his relatives and a community elder who vouched for him had been detained and were being interrogated.

In some green-on-green cases, personal grievances might drive the attackers to throw in their lot with the Taliban.

That is apparently what happened in the case of Noor Agha, a young man who police say killed eight border security police in their check post on the border near Spinbaldak, the major crossing point between Kandahar and Pakistan, on Dec. 18.

Police said Agha, whose age was unclear but whom police sources described as "still beardless," had been the involuntary companion of the border police commander at that check post, Agha Amire, for several years. Other police commanders who knew both said there was clearly an "improper relationship" between the two.

The wave of killings over the past year has policemen all over Afghanistan watching what they eat and sleeping uneasily.

"We make sure that nobody gets the chance to poison the food," said Sharif Agha, 26, a police sergeant who commands a small outpost in Khost city, in eastern Afghanistan. The 10 officers there take turns helping the cook and make sure at least two people are in the kitchen at all times.

At night, a third guard is assigned to watch the two guards normally on duty.

"I don't know about the rest of the guys," he said, "but I have not slept properly over the past few months."